


Ballistic

by kuzibah



Category: Being Human (UK)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-07-23 10:12:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16156949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuzibah/pseuds/kuzibah
Summary: Something bad happens to George in the woods. Mitchell comes to his rescue.





	Ballistic

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2009, after the first series.

George always came to the morning after the full moon thinking that the pain would kill him. His skin was bruised and scratched, it hurt to breathe and swallow, and every muscle ached right through to the bone. It wasn’t surprising; his body had been broken apart and reassembled—twice—in the course of the night. But he’d always have to lie still for what seemed like a very long time, recovering. 

This morning, it was worse. 

George had only moved a little, a tentative flex of his back as he awoke, and there was a burning, tearing sensation across his chest and down one thigh. He cried out, a high-pitched yelp of agony as tears sprang to his eyes. He was able to bring one hand up to see what injury he’d sustained, and then he felt the sticky warmth across his skin.

A surge of adrenaline pulsed through him, enough for him to roll onto his side and look down. His torso was covered with blood, and beneath, a jagged circle made up of many small wounds. 

“Oh, God,” he moaned, and tried to push himself up. But the pain and effort was too much, and he slumped back onto the blood-stained forest floor.

~~~~

“He should have called by now, don’t you think?” Mitchell asked, more for something to say than because he wanted an answer.

“Maybe he got lost,” Annie said. “Or he’s having trouble finding a phone.”

Mitchell considered this. Very reasonable suggestions, he knew, but still… the sun had risen hours ago. Even if the werewolf had wandered for miles (and it probably had) George should have found his way back by now. 

“Maybe no one hung out their washing last night,” Annie said, and they both shared a smile at the thought of George huddling in a shrub, too embarrassed to make a naked sprint for the phone booth.

“Maybe,” Mitchell said, checking the time again. Ten-fifteen. “I’m going to look for him,” he told Annie, heading for the stairs. “I’m just going to grab him some clothes.”

~~~~

George knew it wasn’t doing him any good to panic, but he couldn’t stop long enough to think clearly. He’d bite down on the pain, try to tell himself it was blood loss or shock that was making him disoriented, and then be hit by a new wave of panic. 

He’d managed to get into the relative shelter of a group of birch trees, and to sit up with his legs against his chest, but getting it together enough to walk the miles necessary to find a phone was completely out of the question. He’d examined his injuries as best he could. The bleeding seemed to have slowed to a sluggish ooze, and he was pretty sure the wounds had been made by a shotgun of some kind. Like he knew anything about guns. He’d prodded the damage gingerly, thinking at first he might be able to pull out the projectiles by hand, but the pain made that impossible.

So now he was convinced he’d die, alone, an excruciating, lingering death from exposure and dehydration. And that wasn’t helping the panic one bit.

At least with no one around to help him, there was no one to see him cry, either. So he did.

~~~~

“I shouldn’t be long,” Mitchell promised Annie, hoping he wasn’t lying to her. He drove to the spot where he’d dropped George off, tossed the rucksack full of clothes (and towels, and bottled water, and aspirin, just in case) over one shoulder and walked the short distance to the clearing George had determined a few days before was sufficiently removed from civilization to minimize the werewolf’s threat.

Yes, he’d been here. There were his clothes from the day before, neatly folded and stacked on a fallen log. But of George himself, there was no sign. 

Mitchell tucked the clothes and shoes into the sack, and walked a slow circle around the edge of the clearing. He found some areas where the leaves had been disturbed, but nothing that clearly marked George’s path. Certainly not the clear-cut line of paw prints he’d secretly been hoping for. 

“Well, Mitchell,” he murmured to himself. “Are you a predator or aren’t you?” And he crouched down in the litter of leaves and allowed his vampire nature to present.

Around him, the colors of the autumn forest deepened and sharpened, shapes coming into high relief as he saw them through his beetle-black vampire eyes. He inhaled deeply, allowing the scents of the forest to fill him: damp earth and rotting leaves first, then… there. The particular scent of the werewolf, sharp, acrid, unmistakably animal but with the heavy aroma of the supernatural, too. And under it all, so subtle as to almost be overlooked, the spicy scent of George. 

Mitchell could almost see the scent-trail with this heightened awareness, winding off to the north, into the hills. He stood up, and hared off after it.

~~~~

George squinted up at the sun streaming down through the trees. It was late morning, but he’d never been good at estimating time by the sun, so how long he’d been out there was a bit of a mystery. 

The flesh around the gunshot wounds had begun to become inflamed, swollen and unbearably tender to the touch. George had tried to lay down in such a way that there was no pressure on his injuries, but that didn’t seem possible, so now his thigh was throbbing with pain. And George was pretty sure he was running a fever, so maybe there was an infection, too.

He found his fingers kept returning to the place where his Star of David usually hung against his chest, trying to find some comfort in his faith. When he’d become a werewolf he’d wanted to turn his back on God, reject the Creator who could let something like that live and infect the innocent, but he couldn’t. He just couldn’t. He couldn’t know God’s plan, or why what happened to him had happened. He just had to trust. Like Moses in the desert.

And now he was about to start praying. It must really be the end.

~~~~

Mitchell stepped out of the edge of the woods into a small farmyard. There was a weather-beaten henhouse with a few mean-looking chickens pecking the bare ground around it, and beyond a trailer home so rusted that its original paint color was unclear. A yellow mongrel dog slept under a tree, tied to the trunk with a short length of rope, and the rest of the yard was cluttered with rusting machinery parts, broken crates and barrels, and the hollowed-out carcasses of automobiles. The sunniest part of the yard had the remains of a garden, the dead vines littering the ground.

Mitchell inhaled deeply, trying to follow the scent of the werewolf, but the riot of competing aromas made its direction unclear. 

“You there! Get off my property!” came a shout, and Mitchell looked up to see a man coming around from the back of the trailer. His white hair and beard were long and unkempt, and his face was gray with age. His clothes were a mismatched assortment of plaid and denim, all uniformly filthy. 

And under one arm he held an antique shotgun. He used it to gesture in Mitchell’s direction.

“I said get out!” the man said.

Mitchell raised both hands and took a few steps back. “Whoa, whoa, old-timer,” he said, trying to sound as friendly as possible. “I’m just looking for…”

_For what?_ he thought. _My naked friend? My pet werewolf?_

“There ain’t no one here but me,” the farmer told him, not waiting for him to finish. “Now go on.”

“Listen,” Mitchell said. “I’m not here to cause you any problems. It’s just… did you see anything unusual around here last night?”

“Just a bear sniffing round the henhouse,” the old man said, then patted the stock of the shotgun. “But we saw him off.”

Mitchell felt his stomach clench in fear. “A bear? Which way did it go?”

“How should I know?” the man complained. “My eyes ain’t what they used to be. Hey now, what you doing out there?”

Ignoring the old man’s shouted protests, Mitchell began to pace the circumference of the farmyard, nearly bent double as he breathed in the thick scents and scanned the ground for signs of blood. Within a minute he found it, the werewolf’s blood spattered on the ground, then drops leading off into the forest. 

Mitchell followed them at a flat-out sprint.

~~~~

George felt his consciousness drifting, the bright sunlight fading to darkness for a moment before he blinked himself awake. He knew you were supposed to keep a victim of concussion from losing consciousness, but what about gunshots? If he fell asleep, would he ever wake up? The thought that the answer might be “no” kept his adrenaline surging just enough to keep him from blacking out completely, but he knew it was only a matter of time. 

And now he was beginning to hallucinate. Who could possibly be calling his name this far out in the woods?

Then Mitchell’s face was filling his vision.

“George? George! Stay with me,” Mitchell said, and he patted George’s cheek roughly. “Can you hear me?”

“Mitchell?” George croaked. “Is it you?”

“It’s me, I’ve got you,” Mitchell said, lifting George a bit to try and get him sitting up. George moaned with the pain of it, but Mitchell lifted a water bottle to his lips and poured a bit into his mouth.

“Try to swallow,” Mitchell said, stroking two fingers along the side of George’s throat, and George did get some down without choking. Mitchell looked helplessly at the trees around them. 

“I’m going to have to carry you back to the car,” he told George when no gurney materialized. “And I can’t see how I’m going to do it without hurting you. Just be brave, George, and I’ll have you home as soon as I can. Can you do that for me?”

George stared up at him, and Mitchell couldn’t breathe until he gave a tiny nod. 

“Alright, George, hold on,” Mitchell said, and he hoisted George onto one shoulder and climbed to his feet.

~~~~

Vampires were generally not nearly as strong as they were portrayed in films, in Mitchell’s experience. They were stronger than humans, certainly, but not ridiculously so, and carrying George’s (very solid) dead weight for four miles or so was not exactly a stroll in the park. Still, Mitchell managed, and rolled George into the back seat. When he had him situated as comfortably as he could, Mitchell pulled the Star of David pendant out of his pocket and placed it gently around George’s neck.

George was too exhausted to even groan.

Mitchell dialed the mobile with one hand as he sped home. “Annie,” he said when the ghost picked up the phone. “Boil up some water and put it in a basin with some of the antiseptic wash from the bathroom. And bring down the bandages, too.”

“Is George okay?” Annie said. “Where was he?”

“I’ll be home as soon as I can,” Mitchell said. “We’re going to have to do some first aid.”

~~~~

Annie was waiting on the front step with a blanket and a worried expression. When she saw George, she gasped. “All that blood, Mitchell,” she whispered. “Did he..?”

“No, it’s his blood,” Mitchell said, and Annie gasped again.

“It looks worse than it is,” Mitchell assured her, and he wrapped the blanket around George. “Okay, George,” he said with false cheer. “Time to get inside. Annie, get the doors for me.”

He managed to get George out of the car, into the house, and up to his room, where he stretched him out on the bed. Annie flitted back and forth to the bedside with the antiseptic and bandages, then fetched peroxide, iodine, aspirin, and a fresh cup of tea while Mitchell cleaned the blood and dirt from George’s wounds. 

“It’s not that bad,” he said. “The shot didn’t go all that deep. I should be able to get it out.”

“Do you need tweezers?” Annie asked, hovering anxiously nearby. 

“No, there’s a better way,” Mitchell said. “But… bring me a tall glass of water. And a bowl.” He gently stroked George’s damp hair when she’d gone. “I must really care,” he said quietly. 

Annie returned with the water, and Mitchell took a swallow. Then he put the bowl in his lap. He patted George again, and said, “I’m sorry.”

Then he leaned across the bed, pursed his lips over one of the wounds on George’s chest, and proceeded to suck the shot out of George’s flesh. 

“Oh, God, that’s disgusting,” he panted after he’d spat the metal pellet and a mouthful of blood into the bowl. 

“You sucked his blood!” Annie was staring at him in horror.

“It’s not like that,” Mitchell croaked. “He’s a werewolf. We can’t feed from them. But I need to get the shot out.”

Annie stared, wide-eyed, and Mitchell reached towards her. She jumped back, alarmed. 

“I just need some water, Annie,” Mitchell said gently, and with a nervous laugh she placed the glass in his hand. 

The process was slow, but Mitchell managed to get all the shot out of George’s chest before rolling him onto his side to work on the wounds in his thigh. As he extracted the shot, Annie carefully bandaged George’s chest. 

Eventually, all of the pellets were out, congealing into a revolting mass in the bottom of the bowl, and Mitchell retired to the bathroom, where he vomited up everything he’d eaten in the previous day. Then he leaned against the cool tile of the wall, and tried to take deep, steady breaths.

Annie finished the bandaging and then tidied George’s room, bringing him a fresh blanket and tucking him in. She found Mitchell still on the bathroom floor, clinging weakly to the side of the tub.

“I’d heard it was bad,” Mitchell said, “but I never thought…” He leapt for the toilet again, heaved and choked, but brought up only a thin stream of bile. Annie ran a washrag under the sink tap, and put the wet cloth against the back of his neck. 

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s get you into bed.” 

~~~~

Annie drifted between the two men for the rest of the day and the night. She brought the basin and set it on the floor beside Mitchell’s bed. She was there to hold back his hair and clean his face afterwards. George she kept wrapped in layers of warm blankets, and fed him some broth when he woke just after dark.

“Where’s Mitchell?” he asked as Annie held the mug to his lips. 

“In bed,” she said. “Helping you… it took a lot out of him.”

“I don’t even remember,” George said. “Did he take out the bullets himself?”

“They were only shotgun pellets,” Annie said, and didn’t elaborate. 

George finished the broth and lay back. He touched the bandages on his chest gingerly, then rubbed his Star of David between two fingers. “I don’t think I have a fever anymore,” he said. “Do I feel warm to you?”

Annie put the back of her hand against his forehead, and George shivered involuntarily. “I don’t know why you’re asking me,” she said. “You always feel warm to me. But no, you don’t feel especially warmer than usual.”

“That’s good,” George sighed, sinking further into the bed. “I should probably…”

Annie pulled the blankets up under his chin. “Just rest,” she said. “You can take care of things in the morning.”

~~~~

Annie took the liberty of calling out sick for the two men at the hospital the next morning, and let them both sleep in. Mitchell made his way downstairs first, looking even paler than usual. He refused all offers of food, at last taking only a few mouthfuls of weak tea. 

“Are you feeling any better?” Annie asked. 

“Better,” Mitchell confirmed. “I haven’t been sick like that since I was alive, and a child at that. It was so much worse than I remembered.”

“Why did that happen? Was it because George is… you know?”

“Was what? What happened?” George stepped into the kitchen from the hall, limping in favor of his injured leg.

“Nothing,” Mitchell said. “It’s not important.”

George turned to Annie. “What’s going on?”

Annie shot Mitchell a guilty look, then blurted, “Mitchell got sick because he swallowed some of your blood.”

George half-fell into one of the kitchen chairs. “Wait… what? He, he… what?”

“I had to get out the pellets,” Mitchell explained. “I figured the best way would be to suck them out. It’s what we sometimes did for shrapnel wounds, if they weren’t too deep.”

George gave a squeak, halfway between horrified and insulted. “And it made you sick?”

“You wouldn’t even believe,” Mitchell muttered into his teacup.

“Was it… because..?” 

“What do you think, George?” Mitchell said wearily. “Why do you think vampires hate werewolves?”

“Because you can’t eat us?” George sounded offended. “That’s just, just… that’s just bigotry.”

“Well, your average vampire is pretty narrow-minded,” Annie said. “Present company excepted, of course.”

Mitchell raised his teacup in her direction and managed another small sip.

George frowned, then reached across the table to touch Mitchell’s arm. “You’re right,” he said. “It’s not important. You saved me. That is important. And I’m very grateful to you.” 

“You’re welcome,” Mitchell said. “Just don’t get shot again.”

“Not planning on it,” George said, and busied himself selecting a cup of tea from the half-dozen or so on the table. Then it was Mitchell’s turn to take George’s arm, but his grip was firm, designed to get George’s attention. 

“I mean it, George,” he said. “In fact, I think you should avoid the forest altogether. When I think what could have…”

“Mitchell, I’m fine,” George said, trying for a light tone and not entirely successful at it.

“What if that farmer had a rifle, George?” Mitchell said, more forceful now. “He shot the werewolf… he shot _you_ right in the chest. You must have been practically on top of him. If he’d had something bigger than a bird gun, you’d be dead, George. And there’d be a three sentence bit in the newspaper about some crazy farmer who claims he shot a bear outside Bristol!”

George stared, then stuttered for a moment before saying, “is that what would happen? If I were killed in werewolf form? I thought I’d turn back into myself.”

“As far as I know, you would stay as you were,” Mitchell said. “But I’ve never had occasion to test that first hand.”

George put his hands over his face. “Oh, God,” he moaned. “This just gets worse.”

Annie put her arms around George’s shoulders. “But you’re okay today,” she said. “Mitchell fetched you, and we bandaged you. In a few days, you’ll be good as new.”

“And it could be worse,” Mitchell said. “You could turn into a pile of ashes.”

“Or just float away like smoke,” Annie said.

George gave a short, bitter laugh. “Oh, yes, that makes me feel much better.”

“Don’t let it preoccupy you, George,” Mitchell said fondly. “If I’ve anything to say about it, you’ll be the very rare werewolf who dies of old age at home in his bed.”

George reached up and took hold of Annie’s arm, then reached with his other hand for Mitchell. “Thank you,” he said. “I mean that sincerely. I don’t know how I could deal with this without you.”

“Same here,” Mitchell said quietly, and Annie just hugged him tighter.


End file.
